Get ready for another killer, boundary bending and totally 'gram-able public art experience! The Splendour Arts Program is back to celebrate the hook-up of music and contemporary art. Featuring new and evolving artworks, this program taps into every emoji emotion - from LOL’s to whimsy and deeply philosophical. You’ll see feats of endurance and stunt performances as well as the fine art of drawing and painting. Feel free to aggravate the cleaners as they attempt to retain control and collaborate with Laith McGregor on his large-scale drawings. The Cool Shit team return with a new pun on a music ikon. And we dare you to enter the Barn for Graveyard Boogie or to assist in the Witch Hunt. Pass through Gateways to another world and experience the Mix Up Stage tent top transformed into a monumental canvas for Brooklyn Whelan’s paintings. Ash Keating, who painted the entrance tunnel for Splendour in the Grass in 2016, returns to repaint the surface with his ongoing 'Gravity System Response' series.

Be prepared to think, participate and laugh. And probably get a bit scared.

ANDY FORBES

ANDY FORBES

Get set for some graveyard boogie! Performance and installation legend Andy Forbes presents a spooky scene consisting of DJ’s in the barn window and audience interactive comedy, all centred around sacrifices in and around a large-scale wicker man sculpture in a graveyard. Using improvised theatre, video projection, sculpture and music, Andy exploits comedy and satire to parody popular culture. often focusing on the realms of religious cults, fetish and socio-political taboos. Andy has created interactive theatre experiences for audiences at Splendour since 2002 and is still going strong.

Pickle’s Funeral Parlour also makes a comeback with an audience walk-through installation consisting of three connected, interactive environments. It’s presented via a Gothic family called the Pickle’s, who trade in death, the afterlife and all its mysteries. Pickle’s Funeral Parlour will feature theatre, video, sound, performance kinetic sculpture and installation.

LOCATION: THE BARN

RUNNING TIMES: FRI 20, SAT 21, SUN 22 JULY FROM 1PM – 7PM

SHOCK THERAPY PRODUCTIONS

SHOCK THERAPY PRODUCTIONS

A living room sits in mid-air, 7 metres above the ground. It is completely white. Two cleaners in white uniforms inspect the room, taking great pains to maintain the white rooms perfect whiteness. On the ground below sits a giant slingshot. Beside the slingshot, a large collection of mud- filled balloons. Let the games begin. Fights, meltdowns, existential crisis; who knows what will unfold, how The Cleaners will rectify the situation, and what secrets they will uncover in the process. The Cleaners is a brand-new durational performance installation by multi award winning contemporary performance makers, Shock Therapy productions.

RUNNING: THURSDAY 19 JULY FROM 6PM – 10PM

FRI 20, SAT 21 AND SUN 22 FROM 10AM – 10PM

LOCATION: BESIDE TINY DANCER STAGE

SAM SONGAILO

SAM SONGAILO

In Adelaide, in the front bar of the Grace Emily hotel there was a sticker on one of the bar fridges that read: "DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL". Maybe it's gone now but that sticker really pissed me off every time I went to the bar. I love techno and at the time I was trying to make paintings that somehow embodied electronic music. This sticker was seemingly an affront to all I believed and was trying to achieve. Nevertheless, it got me thinking. I wondered what it was about a drum machine, without a soul, an empty collection of circuits and wires that could bring us to our feet and move us to dance. Was a soul so important after all?

Artist Sam Songailo’s work takes form in painting, installation, video, sound and sculpture. Often highly immersive and realised on a monumental scale, Sam’s work accentuates the compositional elements of line and space in a form that recalls both the modernist grid and digital networks.

Sam lives and works in Adelaide, Australia. He is assisted with lighting design and production by Taylor Chadwick.

RUNNING TIMES: THURS 19, FRI 20, SAT 21, SUN 22 JULY – 10AM – 2AM

LOCATION: ENTRANCE TO AMPHITHEATRE

COOL SHIT

COOL SHIT

Andy Warhol says rich people eat the same hot dogs as regular people. In 2016, Snoop Dog was invited onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! to take on the host’s first “Howz It Mizzade” video challenge. This which showed the process of how hot dogs are made in a factory. “This is a hot dog!? Oh cuz, I ain’t never eating a m—–f—— hot dog! Ugh!” he said. “If that’s how they make hot dogs, I don’t want one. I’m good.” Looks Snoop’s family barbies are going to have one less person in the line for franks. Visit the garden of Snoop Dogg hot dogs, serving American dreams all day, erryday.

RUNNING TIMES: FRI 20, SAT 21 AND SUN 22 FROM 12NOON TO 7PM

LOCATION: NEAR COCKTAIL BAR

LAITH McGREGOR

LAITH McGREGOR

TITLE: HIDE YOUR EYES

Internationally acclaimed artist Laith McGregor’s practice spans drawing, painting, sculpture and video. His intricately drawn works, using ballpoint pen, have been shown in Australia and internationally. He’s also obsessed with figures who have beards and are without eyes – their empty eye sockets sit in vacant faces that still manage to appear tragic extracting some empathy from the viewer.

The focus of Hide Your Eyes is a self-portrait in the likeness of a guru/religious figure, manipulated in various ways to attempt to deface, distort and alter. Ready with permanent markers to be drawn on in situ, the banners will evolve in collaboration with the Splendour crowd. Laith invites you to channel your inner Banksy and draw faces, text, graffiti and ramblings of your own, directly onto the work to build an alternate communal persona. Let the fun begin.

BROOKLYN WHELAN

Have you met our very first Artist in Residence? Aside from creating Splendour’s awesome event artwork, visual artist Brooklyn Whelan will present Zero Three, a site- specific video mapping project incorporating his ethereal cloud paintings. This collection of larger-than-life moving images, will be projected on the Mix Up Stage tent top. But get in quick! Like your best ever Snapchat, this artwork will expire after the three days of Splendour in the Grass - never to be seen again. Almost like an impending storm system that shocks and awes and then vanishes forever.

"As a painter, I work to develop paintings that speak about the beauty and power that exists within weather patterns. I constantly find myself staring into oncoming storms. I do not merely want to capture the image with my painting; rather, with strong bold strokes, I want to give it life and energy, also the sense of fiction and fantasy that one might see in an 80’s sci-fi. Powerful electricity, but with a tone of grace, softness and movement.” said Brooklyn.

RUNNING TIMES: THURS 19, FRI 20, SAT 21 AND SUN 22 FROM 6PM – 2AM

LOCATION: MIX UP STAGE

ASH KEATING

ASH KEATING

TITLE: GRAVITY SYSTEM RESPONSE

Melbourne-born visual artist Ash Keating likes to work Big. He makes enormous paintings, sometimes 20-metres tall. Like hugely physical performance art, Ash explores colour, movement, paint, water, air and gravity. The resulting works are a feat of logistics as much as they are an artistic expression.

Ash has exhibited extensively in galleries and created numerous large-scale, site-responsive art projects in Australia and internationally since 2004. He painted the entrance tunnel for Splendour in the Grass in 2016 and now returns to repaint the surface with his ongoing 'Gravity System Response' series.